


two thousand years before you

by symphonyine



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Manga Spoilers, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, Speculation, if you're not up to date, more drabble-ish really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 03:34:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4206408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/symphonyine/pseuds/symphonyine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Humanity is freed, and Armin and Mikasa are two thousand years early.</p>
            </blockquote>





	two thousand years before you

It's nearing midday when you know your destination is close; of course it was Mikasa who realised first, the gradual change of the soil beneath their feet, the first faint whiffs of salt, the chill of the augmenting breeze. Battle-tuned to Mikasa's sharp senses, you caught up almost instantly, drawn to alertness by the upward tilt of her nose, her head cocking and a single step slowed.   
  
Beyond the trees, you catches your first sight of the sea, that great glory you and he had spun so many stories of in those halcyon days. Your heart is racing, distantly yearning, and it's both less and more than what you had expected. A stretch of bright white sand, speckled with dark rocks, and then - sun-spilled radiance pouring on the waves, gathering on foam, water the colour of Eren's eyes, stretching on - truly - farther than the horizon, as if without end, limitless as the freedom he had dreamed of in the same breath. Outside the cover of the trees, the sun is blinding, the wind strong and cutting. It's not yet spring, after all.   
  
Deep within your gut, something aches and hurts warmly. You turn to Mikasa, whose hand is holding the scarf against her face in the wind, find her crying into it, but smiling more painfully brightly than the sun. Your own tears fall; they hurt, like knives, from the cold of the wind. Except you knows what real knives feel like, and this is not worth bemoaning, when now, when now, what you have, compared to before, is so much more -   
  
"We must bring Eren here one day," Mikasa says, "right, Armin?" and you can't help but agree, keeping the unsaid grief between you silent. Oh, if Eren could be here, Eren who had dreamed and fought more fervently for this sight than anyone else had.   
  
It's been over a year since you and Mikasa last saw Eren. Mikasa would have insisted on making this trip earlier, but without Eren her loyalties suddenly belonged to a lot more people, people she had led in the last periods of chaos, people she needed to help up now that the war was over. You yourself needed, for your own personal hungers, to make sense of it all, those last moments of chaos, and for others, saw a place and a need for your own abilities. In the aftermath, Queen Historia needed all the help she could get, helping the kingdom back to its feet, expanding territory to sustain its cramped population, establishing ties with the warriors' villages, ensuring organised migrations for those who chose to leave, endorsing explorations, and all this without even starting on the internal rot of the system. You knew how much of a difference you could make, and you hadn't yet hesitated in giving everything since that day in the square in Trost when Eren and Mikasa had severed the illusions of your ineptitude.   
  
Now, at the first signs of stability, in the knowledge that Queen Historia and the people at her side were capable of managing for a while, you and Mikasa had started this journey, this journey meant for three but taken by two. Scouts, repurposed after the liberation of humanity, had already sent back reports of the sea in this direction - but hearing about it has never, never been the same as seeing it for yourself.   
  
It breaks your heart that Eren isn't here, to feel the heat of the sun beating down, the coarse sharp sand nipping at your feet, the ceaseless rhythmic ebb and flow of the waves like a lullaby. Along the beach, small hard whorls of many shapes and sizes ("Seashells," you tell Mikasa, and you both press your ears to their hollow mouths, and find your book was right; "Not those though, not sure what they are but I think they're supposed to be edible." "Edible? Too small.") - Mikasa collects a few, for Sasha, but decides it's more worthwhile to spend it on catching marine life in the rockpools and the shallows. You banter comfortably, Mikasa manhandling small but desperately fast life-forms for you to observe and gently prod, listening attentively as you muse aloud - you both decide to cease when a particularly vicious, hard-shelled thing nearly clips off Mikasa's fingers with nasty-looking claws. It's a little quiet without Eren. It's been a little quiet for too long now.   
  
As you and Mikasa sit at last on the sand, ankles washed by the tide, sun-warmth and burning sand-heat seeping through your tired - oh, so tired - bones, you think of Eren, under layers and layers of rock and crystal, buried to save humanity, to give it everything he'd dreamed of and fought for, while others cowered behind false walls and were swallowed up by fancies and corruption. Eren, always so hot-blooded, incapable of passivity - now so cold, so still, so imprisoned while you are all free, glowing gold and white in the afternoon sun, wild winds in your hair, while he hasn't seen the sun in over a year, hasn't felt or drawn a breath in as long.   
  
"We'll get you out," Mikasa had promised then, and then, "We'll get him out," promised again later, and again and again silently with every press of his scarf to her face. "See you later, Eren," her last words to him, the last words he'll remember, to him, two thousand years from now, encased deep in a coffin of his own making; a promise that he'll be found, and saved and freed like the rest of you were, but you and surely Mikasa both know, surely he had known too, that all you can do is move on. While Eren, deprived of freedom, knowledge, love, and light, continues within, two thousand years after you are all dead and gone. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for not updating in so long, life has been a bitch :c Fret not, subscribers (whom I'm very grateful for by the way!!) I still have plenty of WIPs in my folder, from various fandoms, including Free!. They'll just be slow coming, that's all. 
> 
> About this - 
> 
> So there's a theory that the girl in Eren's dream at the start of the manga is Mikasa, except Mikasa from the future and Eren's dreams are clairvoyant (which they are in the anime btw), and Mikasa says those words to him before he dies or something in the end. I took a few leaps with that and connected it to the 1st chapter title, the whole crystal thing, and how the actual Japanese line is actually "itterashai" which is apparently said to people who are leaving. And then I hurt myself with it and pulled this together in less than half an hour. Might extend and develop it in the future, who knows. May also come back to edit this some day. 
> 
> i hope this doesnt happen in the actual manga by the way bc i will weep if eren doesn't get to see the outside world 
> 
> also (if you understand Chinese) [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0z1XfphYzU) is like the theme song for such an ending esp re: eren and mikasa just saying.
> 
> (...yeah i've been getting back into snk)


End file.
